Hacking

Andy, Seamus and I helped two teams write apps and help get others up and running with our CM1 API and public data.

I helped prototype an app, CleanGPA, which gives you a GPA-like score based on your home energy usage. We developed with Rails, and aside from a few hangups around OAuth, I was once again amazed at how fast you can build an app with tools like devise, formtastic. I’ve also been thrilled with the ease and speed of using faraday and vcr as tools to build clients against RESTful APIs.

Yoga & Juice

We also had the pleasure of sponsoring an hour-long yoga session. It was intense but energized me for the rest of the day. My abs are still a little sore!

After yoga, we enjoyed some cleansing juices from Liquiteria. I am a huge fan of ginger and these drinks really hit the spot.

The Apps

The winning apps were Econofy, an efficient appliance shopping guide and, NYCBldgs, a tool that highlights the best and worst-performing buildings in New York City. Econofy did a great job rating products on a five-point scale and helping to calculate money saved by projecting electricity costs. NYCBldgs put New York’s public building energy usage data to good use. I was amazed that the city was opening up so much useful data like this. It really goes a long way in helping us “clean tech hackers” get the job done.

Brighter Planet helps clients identify opportunities for data-driven sustainability initiatives, designs programs around these opportunities to deliver business value, and assists with integration and development